Minor Project: Creating a Two-Part Soundtrack for an Animation

When your YT friend celebrates

Animation: Jobel Lobo

Soundtrack: Roseta Cork

Sorry I haven't been checking in on my projects lately as I've been spending a lot of time thinking (and overthinking) about all my projects and not actually blogging about them. Anyway, this was an animation that I got to make a soundtrack for which was pretty fun to do and was quite light work. For this trimester, I'm basing my projects on things that I haven't done before or that I know will challenge or improve my skills, and working with animation was one I wanted to work on. I picked up this particular project on the SAE interdisciplinary page where Jobel (animator) wanted someone to produce a soundtrack for his project. From this project, I've picked up another project from him as he's asked me to produce some audio assets for his Pokemon animation, which will help refresh and improve my skills in post-pro.

Because we've only communicated through social media, I've never actually met the animator, which is a cool way to work for me as we don't have to meet up and we can send each other our work instantly through a shared google drive folder. He's been cool to work with as we communicate regularly and we get stuff done pretty quick.

So the context for this 40-second animation is: two friends are hanging out by the beach when the boy gets a notification that he has passed over 600 subscribers on YouTube. After receiving that, his expression changes to being pretty chuffed, but the girl is left confused as she has no idea what he's received. To celebrate, the boy orders a tonne of food and the animation ends on a high note.

Originally, the animator asked me to create one soundtrack for the whole animation but after watching it, I felt that there were two clear distinct moods in the animation and one soundtrack wasn't going to cut it and match both scenes, unless I did a chord change for the second mood, which I'm not really a big fan of doing in my compositions. So I decided to go for a two-part soundtrack. For the first beach scene before the boy gets a notification, I felt that the scene had a chill atmosphere with the two sitting by the beach with the waves crashing in the background, but then after he receives the news, the mood changes completely where he is overjoyed, especially towards the end when the food arrives.

For most soundtrack compositions, I use the midi instruments on Xpand!2 on Pro Tools because of the many different instruments that I can use that I wouldn't have access to such as woodwind instruments, drum kits, mallet instruments, etc. Especially for an animation, I feel like midi instruments would suit better than recording live instruments.

Track for First Scene

Midi Tracks for 1st track

The instruments used in this track were a piano, a double bass, a shaker and a snare. I kept it really simple because the scene didn't require many instruments due to its laidback mood of the scene. Also taking into account that the track was going to be played a the background, so it needed to have space for the sound effects to be heard in the entire mix. I set a slow tempo to match the mood and had two chords (D7, G9) repeat throughout the track.

The piano plays the first chord (D7) on the first beat and is sustained for the entire bar until the next bar where it the G9 plays and sustains.

With the bass, I played short notes to differ from the piano's sustained notes, and played a melody that matched both the D7 and G9 chords, which goes for 8 bars and is looped for the entire track.

The maracas plays in 8th notes to keep the tempo going but is delayed about 1-2 milliseconds late for the rhythm to have some sort of swing to it, which suited the laidback mood. I also chose the maracas because it was a percussion instrument that wasn't harsh in the mix like hi-hats for example.

I chose a loose sounding snare to match the looseness of the track and had the snare playing on the 3rd beat. Actually forgot about adding a kick whoops but the piano's hard play of the first note of the bar kinda acts as one so there you go.

For the track ending, I had all the instruments end on the G9 chord which matched the scene as the boy opened the notification and his pupils shrink. The short ending that fades out to silence helps the audience to expect that he's received something good or bad and keeps them on their toes, but as the organ major melody introduces the second track, it then helps the audience figure out that it's good news.

Track for Second Scene

Midi Tracks for 2nd Track

The instruments I used in the second track were two different organs, double bass, kick, claps, tambourine and a music box. I wanted to have different instruments to the first track so to separate the two moods entirely, and I also had to choose instruments that suited the happy upbeat track such as a music box. I increased the tempo to 189bpm as well as changed the key to A major (chords are A major, B major, C# Major, then back to B Major).

The organs (each panned left and right) play an important role in keeping the upbeat happy mood as they play short on most beats of the bar, as well as the tambourine which plays in 8th notes to keep the tempo consistent.

The kick is played on the 1st beat of every bar while the claps hit the 3rd beat of every bar, like the snare in the first track. I used claps to act as the snare in this track as claps to me feels more loose, it's light on the ear drums compared to a snare, and has a child-like vibe to it, which is why in most happy songs, claps are used.

With the bass, I played a rhythm similar to a walking bass line rhythm but with syncopation:

| 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 & | Repeat

*Bold is where bass is playing in a bar*

The bass followed the chords and played notes within that chord as the melody, for example for when it's A Major, the bass plays | A , C#, D, C# | (looped), then goes up a tone for B Major as well as C# Major.

The music box melodies really helped in creating the happy, cute mood of the scene as it was played in a higher octave than the rest of the instruments, its tone was sweeter, and music boxes tend to commonly associate with children and anything child-like such as animations, hence why I chose this instrument. The whole melody lasts for 4 bars then is looped but to make it not sound repetitive, I added a harmony on the second loop. To end the animation, the music boxes are the last instruments playing in the mix, to which then they end on the sweet chord of A Major 7.

Kitchen Scene

There is a kitchen scene within the celebratory scene where the cook is preparing the boy's order and there's no beach in site. Due to this scene not being in the same environment, I wanted my track to be heard from a different space or to have a different level to the original track, which then I came up with the idea to have it sound like the track was coming out of a radio on one side of the kitchen. I've never really had to edit individual clips in my compositions but I've always wanted to try out AudioSuite so I was really glad to have come across this idea of editing certain parts of the track to match the switching of environments. I marked the exact frame of when the kitchen scene starts and ends so that the effected audio would switch seamlessly from each environment. Because AudioSuite only works with audio tracks, I had to convert my midi tracks to audio by bussing them out to new audio tracks to then re-record the kitchen scene part of the track.

2nd Track Midi tracks converted into audio for individual clip editing for radio effect in kitchen scene

After re-recording the tracks, I grouped them and applied an EQ on them via the AudioSuite to roll off any low frequencies that wouldn't be heard on radio speakers. Then I added Sans Amp on them all via AudioSuite and increased the crunch, drive, and the high frequencies on the amp, to get that harsh high end sound that radio speakers normally produce. I then panned the audio tracks about less than a quarter to the right so that it felt like the track was being heard in the corner of the kitchen from a bad radio speaker. After the kitchen scene, I switched the track back to the original mix which played until the animation ended.

For the ending, I took out one instrument off the mix at a time until the last instrument (the music box) played its last chord to end the animation.

After trying out and experimenting with AudioSuite, I'll definitely be using it more in my own compositions as well as using it as a general editing tool.

Working on this animation has made me want to work on more short animations and has taught me more about understanding the mood that you're trying to create and how you're going to portray that so that the audience can understand. It was also good for me to compose in a different genre that I'm not used to working with as it has helped me with music theory and helped me get creative to achieve the sounds I wanted.